Today, the Church remembers the the visit of Blessed Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist as recorded in the Gospel of Luke 1:39–56.
Traditionallly, Mary, a young Jewish girl who was little more than an adolescent by today’s standards, probably around the age of 13 when she left Nazareth immediately after the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel that she, though a virgin, would bear the Son of God. Luke records that she went “into the hill country…into a city of Judah” to attend to her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth was in the sixth month of her pregnancy before Mary came. Mary stayed three months, and most scholars hold she stayed for the birth of John. Given the prevailing cultural traditions and needs for security, etc., it is probable that Joseph accompanied Mary to Judah then returned to Nazareth, and came again after three months to take Mary back to their home. The visitation of the angel Gabriel to Joseph, mentioned in Matthew 1:19–25, may have taken place then to end the tormenting doubts of Joseph regarding Mary’s maternity.
In the Gospel of Luke, the author’s accounts of the Annunciation and Visitation are constructed using eight points of literary parallelism to compare Mary to the Ark of the Covenant.
It is traditionally held that the purpose of this visit was to bring divine grace to both Elizabeth and her unborn child. Even though he was still in his mother’s womb, John became aware of the presence of the Son of God, Jesus, and leapt for joy and filled with Holy Spirit.
The first person to recognize the unborn Son of God was an unborn child, who would become God’s prophet. In this we see the dignity of human life, from conception to birth to death.
Elizabeth also responded similarly and recognized the presence of Jesus, at which she [Elizabeth] spoke out with a loud voice, and said, “Hail, Mary, full of grace! Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”
In response to Elizabeth, Mary proclaims the Magnificat:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.”
Blessed indeed is she who believed the promise of the Lord, and blessed is he, Joseph, who also believed the promise of the Lord.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Bearer of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Father in heaven, by your grace the virgin mother of your incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping your word: Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today the Church observes the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, also simply called Trinity Sunday.
The Gospel reading today is from the Gospel according to St. John:
John 3:1-17
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Such familiar words, so familiar in Western culture that one simply has to write John 3:16 on a wall, or a sign at a sporting event, or an athlete on his face, and most know that this refers to that most beloved of sayings of Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Being born again, born of the Spirit, born from above. Such curious language, but also entirely relatable and understandable. We must all be born again. But how? And what has this to do with the Holy Trinity? And how is this love shown to us?
God’s love is shown to us in that He has made provision for us to be born again, to become newly made and free from the burden of sin that keeps us in the grip of death. God has made it possible that we can become as new born babes by becoming one with His Son, Jesus, through the waters of Holy Baptism, in which, by faith through grace, we come to share in the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. And being joined with His Son, we are made new in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In this beautiful portion of the Gospel according to St. John, we see presented to us in the revelation of God’s love for us the simplest understanding that God, who is of one being, is also a unity of persons in love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is for this reason that when we are baptized it is done in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
How this is, that God is one and also a unity of love, is something that cannot be grasped by the application of our intellect alone. It can only truly be known in our hearts by the revelation of God’s love for us. In the midst of love, God reveals Himself to us, and through Jesus we can be born again and return that love through the movement of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, returning love with love.
Don’t let it break your brain. Rather, ask God to reveal Himself to our hearts in love. And be open. And listen for that quiet voice saying, “I love you.”
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Church remembers St. Augustine of Canterbury, Monk, Archbishop, and Missionary to the Anglo-Saxons.
Ora pro nobis.
Augustine of Canterbury (born first third of the 6th century AD – died probably 26 May 604) was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597 AD. He is considered the “Apostle to the English” and a founder of the English Church.
After the withdrawal of the Roman legions from their province of Britannia in 410 AD, the inhabitants were left to defend themselves against the attacks of the Saxons. Before the Roman withdrawal, Britannia had been converted to Christianity and produced the ascetic Pelagius. Britain sent three bishops to the Council of Arles in 314 AD, and a Gaulish bishop went to the island in 396 to help settle disciplinary matters. Material remains testify to a growing presence of Christians, at least until around 360. After the Roman legions departed, pagan tribes settled the southern parts of the island while western Britain, beyond the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, remained Christian. This native British Church developed in isolation from Rome under the influence of missionaries from Ireland and was centred on monasteries instead of bishoprics. Other distinguishing characteristics were its calculation of the date of Easter and the style of the tonsure haircut that clerics wore. Evidence for the survival of Christianity in the eastern part of Britain during this time includes the survival of the cult of Saint Alban and the occurrence in place names of eccles, derived from the Latin ecclesia, meaning “church”. There is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxons. The invasions destroyed most remnants of Roman civilisation in the areas held by the Saxons and related tribes, including the economic and religious structures.
It was against this background that Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in 595 AD. The Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht, who married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, and perhaps earlier than 560. Bertha was the daughter of Charibert I, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. As one of the conditions of her marriage, she brought a bishop named Liudhard with her to Kent. Together in Canterbury, they restored a church that dated to Roman times—possibly the current St Martin’s Church. Æthelberht was a pagan at this point but allowed his wife freedom of worship. One biographer of Bertha states that under his wife’s influence, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory to send missionaries. The historian Ian N. Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen. Other historians, however, believe that Gregory initiated the mission, although the exact reasons remain unclear. Bede, an 8th-century AD monk who wrote a history of the English church, recorded a famous story in which Gregory saw fair-haired Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try to convert their people. More practical matters, such as the acquisition of new provinces acknowledging the primacy of the papacy, and a desire to influence the emerging power of the Kentish kingdom under Æthelberht, were probably involved. The mission may have been an outgrowth of the missionary efforts against the Lombards who, as pagans and Arian Christians, were not on good relations with the Catholic church in Rome.
Aside from Æthelberht’s granting of freedom of worship to his wife, the choice of Kent was probably dictated by a number of other factors. Kent was the dominant power in southeastern Britain. Since the eclipse of King Ceawlin of Wessex in 592, Æthelberht was the leading Anglo-Saxon ruler; Bede refers to Æthelberht as having imperium (overlordship) south of the River Humber. Trade between the Franks and Æthelberht’s kingdom was well established, and the language barrier between the two regions was apparently only a minor obstacle, as the interpreters for the mission came from the Franks. Lastly, Kent’s proximity to the Franks allowed support from a Christian area. There is some evidence, including Gregory’s letters to Frankish kings in support of the mission, that some of the Franks felt that they had a claim to overlordship over some of the southern British kingdoms at this time. The presence of a Frankish bishop could also have lent credence to claims of overlordship, if Bertha’s Bishop Liudhard was felt to be acting as a representative of the Frankish church and not merely as a spiritual advisor to the queen. Frankish influence was not merely political; archaeological remains attest to a cultural influence as well.
In 595 AD, Gregory chose Augustine, who was the prior of the Abbey of St Andrew’s in Rome, to head the mission to Kent. The pope selected monks to accompany Augustine and sought support from the Frankish royalty and clergy in a series of letters, of which some copies survive in Rome. He wrote to King Theuderic II of Burgundy and to King Theudebert II of Austrasia, as well as their grandmother Brunhild, seeking aid for the mission. Gregory thanked King Chlothar II of Neustria for aiding Augustine. Besides hospitality, the Frankish bishops and kings provided interpreters and Frankish priests to accompany the mission. By soliciting help from the Frankish kings and bishops, Gregory helped to assure a friendly reception for Augustine in Kent, as Æthelbert was unlikely to mistreat a mission which visibly had the support of his wife’s relatives and people. Moreover, the Franks appreciated the chance to participate in mission that would extend their influence in Kent. Chlothar, in particular, needed a friendly realm across the Channel to help guard his kingdom’s flanks against his fellow Frankish kings.
Sources make no mention of why Pope Gregory chose a monk to head the mission. Pope Gregory once wrote to Æthelberht complimenting Augustine’s knowledge of the Bible, so Augustine was evidently well educated. Other qualifications included administrative ability, for Gregory was the abbot of St Andrews as well as being pope, which left the day-to-day running of the abbey to Augustine, the prior.
Augustine was the prior of a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him in 595 AD to lead a mission, usually known as the Gregorian mission, to Britain to Christianize King Æthelberht and his Kingdom of Kent from Anglo-Saxon paganism. Kent was probably chosen because Æthelberht had married a Christian princess, Bertha, daughter of Charibert I the King of Paris, who was expected to exert some influence over her husband. Before reaching Kent, the missionaries had considered turning back, but Gregory urged them on, and in 597, Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet and proceeded to Æthelberht’s main town of Canterbury.
King Æthelberht converted to Christianity and allowed the missionaries to preach freely, giving them land to found a monastery outside the city walls. Augustine was consecrated as a bishop and converted many of the king’s subjects, including thousands during a mass baptism on Christmas Day in 597. Pope Gregory sent more missionaries in 601, along with encouraging letters and gifts for the churches, although attempts to persuade the native British bishops to submit to Augustine’s authority failed. Roman bishops were established at London, and Rochester in 604, and a school was founded to train Anglo-Saxon priests and missionaries. Augustine also arranged the consecration of his successor, Laurence of Canterbury. The archbishop probably died in 604 AD and was soon revered as a saint.
O Lord our God, by your Son Jesus Christ you called your apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy Name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Today, the Church remembers St. Bede., Monk and Historian.
Ora pro nobis.
Bede, 672/3 – 26 May 735 A.D. , also known as Saint Bede, Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable, was an English Benedictine monk at the monastery of St. Peter and its companion monastery of St. Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles (contemporarily Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in Tyne and Wear, England). Born on lands likely belonging to the Monkwearmouth monastery, Bede was sent there at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at the Jarrow monastery, both of whom survived a plague that struck in 686, an outbreak that killed a majority of the population there.
While he spent most of his life in the monastery, Bede traveled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles, even visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria. He is well known as an author, teacher (a student of one of his pupils was Alcuin), and scholar, and his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People gained him the title “The Father of English History”.
His ecumenical writings were extensive and included a number of Biblical commentaries and other theological works of exegetical erudition. Another important area of study for Bede was the academic discipline of computus, otherwise known to his contemporaries as the science of calculating calendar dates. One of the more important dates Bede tried to compute was Easter, an effort that was mired with controversy. He also helped establish the practice of dating forward from the birth of Christ (Anno Domini – in the year of our Lord), a practice which eventually became commonplace in medieval Europe.
Bede was one of the greatest teachers and writers of the Early Middle Ages and is considered by many historians to be the single most important scholar of antiquity for the period between the death of Pope Gregory I in 604 and the coronation of Charlemagne in 800.
Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work made the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons, which contributed significantly to English Christianity. Bede’s monastery had access to an impressive library which included works by Eusebius, Orosius, and many others.
His scholarship and importance to Catholicism were recognised in 1899 when he was declared a Doctor of the Church. He is the only Englishman named a Doctor of the Church.
Bede, for whom the worship of God was the whole of your life, from which flowed your learning, wisdom, and ability to pass down to others the Faith, pray for us that our whole lives might be taken up in the worship of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who’s praise you sang as your last words of your earthly life, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit”; and may all our gifts flow from our worship of God, to the building up of the Church.
Heavenly Father, you called your servant Bede, while still a child, to devote his life to your service in the disciplines of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the Spirit to bring the riches of your truth to his generation, so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make you known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Today the Church celebrates the great Feast of Pentecost. In the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised that in the “last days”, inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah, he would pour out his Spirit upon all people. In Acts (2:14 to 18) the apostle Peter quotes this promise to explain what is happening when the disciples of Jesus are suddenly, miraculously able to speak and understand multiple foreign languages starting on the day of Pentecost (Pentecost is the name given to the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew, by the Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek some three centuries before Jesus’ birth). This outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost marks the beginning of the age of the Messiah promised so many centuries before.
But why would God mark this great new beginning, the beginning of the Messianic promise, the start of the Church, by giving Jesus’ disciples the supernatural ability to speak in all the many languages of the world of their time? Why this gift as the first mark of the new Church, and its mission in the world? Later, filled with the Spirit, the apostles would also heal the lame, cure the sick, and cast out demons, as a Jesus said. But why would God mark the beginning of the outpouring of his Spirit by the ability to communicate with others in their own language? Just as he is ascending into the heavenly realm, Jesus commands his disciples, saying “As you go into the world, make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
There it is, the Church’s reason for being, its essential identity, and it is all is about making disciples of all peoples and nations, bringing them into communion with God through Jesus. And this requires language, communication. This is why the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus’ disciples has to do with the communication of truth.
Language, communication, is about so much more than simply understanding words. Language, spoken or otherwise, conveys the totality of a person’s identity, be it cultural, religious, economic, class, sex, and every other kind of social and physical identity. At the surface level, language depends primarily upon the spoken word, and that word is always in a particular language: Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, Sign Language, etc. At this level words can express true things, but they can also deceive and lie. Beyond the spoken word, we communicate through body language, tone of voice, and volume of voice. Our bodies, through posture, eye contact, gestures, and all other forms of unspoken communication, often speak louder and more honestly than our words.
When the truth of our lives speak through our words, actions, affiliations….we are revealing what is true about us, truths that sometimes are not congruent with our words. Words can fail us just when we need them most, especially in situations where tragedy, death, and betrayal render us mute, especially in times of civil unrest as we are witnessing today in our country and around the world. In times of crisis, we may be using the same words, but they have lost their shared meanings. And so we communicate with mass gatherings, riots, burnings, violence, to communicate with force. What will our mouths and our lives say in the midst of such fear, rage, hopelessness, and yes, for some, exultation in taking advantage of this maelstrom, stoking it to further their dark ambitions?
This is why God gives us his Holy Spirit, that we might continuously be born again, sanctified moment to moment, so that our lives and our words are not only congruent, full of integrity, but especially made full of God’s love. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we have still yet a deeper language. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God we are equally able to communicate with each other true things like compassion, humility, generosity of spirit, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity, even if we do no speak a common language. These speak through us more loudly and clearly, either in their presence or their absence, than do all our words and gestures. This is the language of God given to us by grace, a language that the human family so desperately needs to hear spoken with fluency by the Church, by each disciple of Jesus. We deceive ourselves if we think that we are not fooled by each other. We all hear beyond spoken words, bodily gestures, and beyond what we believe that we intend to say to each other. The heart reads the heart and we feel the spark when the Holy Spirit recognizes itself wherever it sees itself as manifest in us.
Many of us talk passionately about our love for those who suffer: the poor, the alien in our midst, those living under generations of prejudice and violence. But they do not hear us, understand us, or gather round us, even when we think that we speak perfectly in their native tongue. Unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, our words and our lives cannot speak as one of the love of God in Jesus. This is the language, the gift, given at Pentecost by God to all who will receive him through his Son, Jesus. God offers all people salvation from their sin, individually and corporately, through his Son Jesus, and empowerment to be his witness by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this age of the Spirit-filled church, all people are invited into communion with the Lord and with each other, first communicated through God’s language of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope.
As we become part of the earthly Body of Jesus, his Church, through grace by faith and through the waters of Holy Baptism, we can discover the gift of mutual love, forgiveness, humility, and reconciliation. What God is asking for are people like you and me to be willing to give our lives wholeheartedly to him, that the Holy Spirit might live in us and through us, speaking the language of God through our lives and our lips. As we are witnessing the violence in our own country, or violence against Israel and the Jewish people Israel, anti-Semitism on our streets and in our government, the ongoing plague of civil war and mass disease and starvation in Yemen, the continuous but unacknowledged mass killing of Christians by Islamic militias in Nigeria, the plague of abortion…wherever we see the desecration of human life, we need disciples who fluently speak and live the language of God more than ever. I pray that God will touch your heart, and mine, and help us with his grace that we might be filled with his Holy Spirit for the sake of our human family that is so lost in the babble of our brokenness. Pray with me that God’s Holy Spirit will be felt, heard, and received by all who live, that we might truly come to love, respect, and honor each other.
Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, to speak only the language of your Spirit, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Lydia of Thyatira is a woman mentioned in the New Testament who is regarded as the first documented convert to Christianity in Europe. Several Christian denominations have designated her a saint.
The name, “Lydia”, meaning “the Lydian woman”, by which she was known indicates that she was from Lydia in Asia Minor. Though she is commonly known as “St. Lydia” or even more simply “The Woman of Purple,” Lydia is given other titles: “of Thyatira,” “Purpuraria,” and “of Philippi (‘Philippisia’ in Greek).” “[Lydia’s] name is an ethnicon, deriving from her place of origin”. The first refers to her place of birth, which is a city in the Greek region of Lydia. The second comes from the Latin word for purple and relates to her connection with purple dye. Philippi was the city in which Lydia was living when she met St. Paul and his companions. All of these titles expound upon this woman’s background.
Acts 16 describes Lydia as follows: A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and stay.” So she persuaded us. — Acts 16:14-15
Lydia was most likely a Greek Macedonian even though she lived in a Roman settlement. She was evidently a well-to-do agent of a purple-dye firm in Thyatira, a city southeast of Pergamum and approximately 40 miles inland, across the Aegean Sea from Athens. Lydia insisted on giving hospitality to Apostle Paul and his companions in Philippi. They stayed with her until their departure, through Amphipolis and Apollonia, to Thessalonica (Acts 16:40-17:1).
Paul, Silas, and Timothy were traveling through the region of Philippi when they encounter “a reputable businesswoman and possibly a widow… [who] was a righteous Gentile or ‘God-fearer’ attracted to Judaism”. “[S]he was one of a large group [considered]…sympathizers with Judaism, believers in the one God, but who had not yet become ‘proselytes’ or taken the final step to conversion to Judaism”.
Because these encounters and events take place “in what is now Europe,” Lydia is considered “the first ‘European’ Christian convert”.
“Thyatira in the province of Lydia (located in what is now western Turkey) was famous for the red [variety of purple] dye”. Lydia of Thyatira is most known as a “seller” or merchant of purple cloth. It is unclear as to if Lydia simply dealt in the trade of purple dye or whether her business included textiles as well, though all known icons of the saint depict her with some form of purple cloth. Most portray this holy woman wearing a purple shawl or veil, which allows many historians and theologians to believe that she was a merchant of specifically purple cloth.
There is some speculation regarding Lydia’s social status. Theologians disagree as to whether Lydia was a free woman or servant. “There is no direct evidence that Lydia had once been a slave, but the fact that her name is her place of origin rather than a personal name suggests this as at least a possibility”. Ascough cites other examples of noble women named Lydia from the first or second centuries, so it is unlikely that she was actually a slave or servant.
Because women did not possess the same equality rights as modern Western women, it appears unusual that Lydia would be capable of inviting a group of foreign men to her house without a man’s consent. Lydia’s evident social power exemplified by her control of a household and ownership of a house (which she offered to St. Paul and his companions) indicates that she was most likely a free woman and possibly a widow.
Eternal God, who gives good gifts to all people, and who teaches us to have the same spirit of generosity: Give us, we pray you, hearts that are always open to hear your word, that following the example of your servant Lydia, we may show hospitality to all who are in any need or trouble, through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Today the Church remembers St. Alcuin of York, Deacon and Abbot of Tours.
Ora pro nobis.
Alcuin of York (c. 735 – 19 May 804 AD) – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin or Alchoin – was an English scholar, clergyman, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria.
He was born around 735 AD and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s.
Alcuin wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems. He was made Abbot of Tours in 796, where he remained until his death. “The most learned man anywhere to be found”, according to Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne (ca. AD 817-833), he is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. Among his pupils were many of the dominant intellectuals of the Carolingian era.
Alcuin was born in Northumbria, presumably sometime in the 730s. Virtually nothing is known of his parents, family background, or origin. In common hagiographical fashion, the Vita Alcuini asserts that Alcuin was ‘of noble English stock,’ and this statement has usually been accepted by scholars. Alcuin’s own work only mentions such collateral kinsmen as Wilgils, father of the missionary saint Willibrord; and Beornrad (also spelled Beornred), abbot of Echternach and bishop of Sens. Willibrord, Alcuin and Beornrad were all related by blood.
In his Life of St Willibrord, Alcuin writes that Wilgils, called a paterfamilias, had founded an oratory and church at the mouth of the Humber, which had fallen into Alcuin’s possession by inheritance. Because in early Anglo-Latin writing paterfamilias (“head of a family, householder”) usually referred to a ceorl, Donald A. Bullough suggests that Alcuin’s family was of cierlisc status: i.e., free but subordinate to a noble lord, and that Alcuin and other members of his family rose to prominence through beneficial connections with the aristocracy. If so, Alcuin’s origins may lie in the southern part of what was formerly known as Deira.
The young Alcuin came to the cathedral church of York during the golden age of Archbishop Ecgbert and his brother, the Northumbrian King Eadberht. Ecgbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede, who urged him to raise York to an archbishopric. King Eadberht and Archbishop Ecgbert oversaw the re-energising and re-organisation of the English church, with an emphasis on reforming the clergy and on the tradition of learning that Bede had begun. Ecgbert was devoted to Alcuin, who thrived under his tutelage.
The York school was renowned as a centre of learning in the liberal arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters. It was from here that Alcuin drew inspiration for the school he would lead at the Frankish court. He revived the school with the trivium and quadrivium disciplines, writing a codex on the trivium, while his student Hraban wrote one on the quadrivium.
Alcuin graduated to become a teacher during the 750s. His ascendancy to the headship of the York school, the ancestor of St Peter’s School, began after Aelbert became Archbishop of York in 767. Around the same time Alcuin became a deacon in the church. He was never ordained a priest. Though there is no real evidence that he took monastic vows, he lived as if he had.
In 781, King Elfwald sent Alcuin to Rome to petition the Pope for official confirmation of York’s status as an archbishopric and to confirm the election of the new archbishop, Eanbald I. On his way home he met Charlemagne (whom he had met once before), this time in the Italian city of Parma.
Alcuin’s intellectual curiosity allowed him to be reluctantly persuaded to join Charlemagne’s court. He joined an illustrious group of scholars that Charlemagne had gathered around him, the mainsprings of the Carolingian Renaissance: Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, Rado, and Abbot Fulrad. Alcuin would later write that “the Lord was calling me to the service of King Charles.” Alcuin became Master of the Palace School of Charlemagne in Aachen (Urbs Regale) in 782. It had been founded by the king’s ancestors as a place for the education of the royal children (mostly in manners and the ways of the court). However, Charlemagne wanted to include the liberal arts and, most importantly, the study of religion. From 782 to 790, Alcuin taught Charlemagne himself, his sons Pepin and Louis, as well as young men sent to be educated at court, and the young clerics attached to the palace chapel. Bringing with him from York his assistants Pyttel, Sigewulf, and Joseph, Alcuin revolutionised the educational standards of the Palace School, introducing Charlemagne to the liberal arts and creating a personalised atmosphere of scholarship and learning, to the extent that the institution came to be known as the ‘school of Master Albinus’.
In this role as adviser, he took issue with the emperor’s policy of forcing pagans to be baptised on pain of death, arguing, “Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptised, but you cannot force them to believe.” His arguments seem to have prevailed – Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.
Charlemagne gathered the best men of every land in his court, and became far more than just the king at the centre. It seems that he made many of these men his closest friends and counsellors. They referred to him as ‘David’, a reference to the Biblical king David. Alcuin soon found himself on intimate terms with Charlemagne and the other men at court, where pupils and masters were known by affectionate and jesting nicknames. Alcuin himself was known as ‘Albinus’ or ‘Flaccus’. While at Aachen, Alcuin bestowed pet names upon his pupils – derived mainly from Virgil’s Eclogues. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “He loved Charlemagne and enjoyed the king’s esteem, but his letters reveal that his fear of him was as great as his love.
In 790 Alcuin returned from the court of Charlemagne to England, to which he had remained attached. He dwelt there for some time, but Charlemagne then invited him back to help in the fight against the Adoptionist heresy which was at that time making great progress in Toledo, the old capital of the Visigoths and still a major city for the Christians under Islamic rule in Spain. He is believed to have had contacts with Beatus of Liébana, from the Kingdom of Asturias, who fought against Adoptionism. At the Council of Frankfurt in 794, Alcuin upheld the orthodox doctrine against the views expressed by Felix of Urgel, an heresiarch according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia. Having failed during his stay in Northumbria to influence King Æthelred in the conduct of his reign, Alcuin never returned home.
He was back at Charlemagne’s court by at least mid-792, writing a series of letters to Æthelred, to Hygbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to Æthelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury in the succeeding months, dealing with the Viking attack on Lindisfarne in July 793. These letters and Alcuin’s poem on the subject, De clade Lindisfarnensis monasterii, provide the only significant contemporary account of these events. In his description of the Viking attack, he wrote: “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain. Behold the church of St Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of God’s priests, robbed of its ornaments.”
In 796 Alcuin was in his sixties. He hoped to be free from court duties and upon the death of Abbot Itherius of Saint Martin at Tours, Charlemagne put Marmoutier Abbey into Alcuin’s care, with the understanding that he should be available if the king ever needed his counsel. There he encouraged the work of the monks on the beautiful Carolingian minuscule script, ancestor of modern Roman typefaces.
Alcuin died on 19 May 804 AD, some ten years before the emperor, and was buried at St. Martin’s Church under an epitaph that partly read: Dust, worms, and ashes now … Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved, Pray, reader, for my soul. The majority of details on Alcuin’s life come from his letters and poems. There are also autobiographical sections in Alcuin’s poem on York and in the Vita Alcuini, a Life written for him at Ferrières in the 820s, possibly based in part on the memories of Sigwulf, one of Alcuin’s pupils.
Almighty God, in an age when Western Europe was filled with warfare and cultural disarray, you raised up your deacon Alcuin to rekindle the light of learning: Illumine our minds, we pray, that amid the uncertainties and confusions of our own time we may show forth your eternal truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Today, the Church remembers St. Dunstan of Canterbury, Monk and Archbishop.
Ora pro nobis.
Dunstan was born near Glastonbury in the southwest of England about the year AD 909, ten years after the death of King Alfred. During the Viking invasions of the ninth century, monasteries had been favorite targets of the invaders, and by Dunstan’s time English monasticism had been wiped out. In its restoration in the tenth century, Dunstan played the leading role. He was born of an upper-class family, and sent to court, where he did not fit in. At the urging of his uncle, the Bishop of Westminster, he became a monk and a priest, and returned to Glastonbury, where he built a hut near the ruins of the ancient monastery, and devoted himself to study, music, metal working (particularly the art of casting church bells, an art which he is said to have advanced considerably), and painting. A manuscript illuminated by him is in the British Museum. He returned to court and was again asked to leave; but then King Edmund had a narrow escape from death while hunting, and in gratitude recalled Dunstan and in 943 commissioned him to re-establish monastic life at Glastonbury. (Glastonbury is one of the oldest Christian sites in England, and is associated with Joseph of Arimathea.)
Under Dunstan’s direction, Glastonbury became an important center both of monasticism and of learning. The next king, Edred, adopted Dunstan’s ideas for various reforms of the clergy (including the control of many cathedrals by monastic chapters) and for relations with the Danish settlers. These policies made Dunstan popular in the North of England, but unpopular in the South.
Edred was succeeded by his sixteen-year-old nephew Edwy, whom Dunstan openly rebuked for unchastity. The furious Edwy drove Dunstan into exile, but the North rose in rebellion on his behalf. When the dust settled, Edwy was dead, his brother Edgar was king, and Dunstan was Archbishop of Canterbury. The coronation service which Dunstan compiled for Edgar is the earliest English coronation service of which the full text survives, and is the basis for all such services since, down to the present. With the active support of King Edgar, Dunstan re-established monastic communities at Malmesbury, Westminster, Bath, Exeter, and many other places. Around 970 he presided at a conference of bishops, abbots, and abbesses, which drew up a national code of monastic observance, the Regularis Concordia. It followed Benedictine lines, but under it the monasteries were actively involved in the life of the surrounding community. For centuries thereafter the Archbishop of Canterbury was always a monk.
Dunstan took an active role in politics under Edgar and his successor Edward, but under the next king, Ethelred, he retired from politics and concentrated on running the Canterbury cathedral school for boys, where he was apparently successful in raising the academic standards while reducing the incidence of corporal punishment. On Ascension Day in 988, he told the congregation that he was near to death, and died two days later. (by James Kiefer)
O God of truth and beauty, you richly endowed your bishop Dunstan with skill in music and the working of metals, and with gifts of administration and reforming zeal: Teach us, we pray, to see in you the source of all our talents, and move us to offer them for the adornmen of worship and the advancement of tgrue religion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Jesus prayed to his Father for his disciples: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
Have we ever understood this prayer of Jesus? Have we remained in the Truth, in the words of the Jesus, the Word of God?
Do we see dissensions in the Church? Has the Church often wandered away from the Truth of Jesus? Have we ourselves wandered away? In the human sphere these are inevitability’s given our desire for certainty or seeking power over each other. These are evidences when we wander away from what Jesus taught us in his words and life, in his death, resurrection, and ascension.
If we would live in the sanctification promised by Jesus, we must live in his Truth, we must live in him. We must be carrying our crosses and being witnesses with our words and lives to the Resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus. Only in this May we find hope.
Will this end the dissensions or the drive for power among us. Sadly not. Not until God brings his kingdom on earth and we are changes forever into his likeness.
But we can see islands of peace, communities living in love, we can know ourselves as beloved, here and there, from time to time, in those times of our being sanctified in his Truth. We all know what is holy, what is sanctified, when we encounter it. No one has to tell us. The encounter with the living God and his Resurrected Son is unforgettable.
When the world has gone off center and people have been made to go mad with fear by those seeking power, look for those communities where the world is centered and full of God’s peace, where people have chosen the peace of God, and go there. Look for the people who have remained in the Truth of Jesus and are full of his peace, and go be with them.
And pray, with all of your might:
Our Father in heaven, May your name be hallowed. Let thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And release us from being bound by our life debt of sin even as we release those who have become bound in life debt from sin against us. And do no lead us into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One! Amen.
Come, Lord Jesus, today, because we are in great peril and in terrible need of your Father’s kingdom!
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Happy Ascension Day! Today is the fortieth day after Easter Day and is observed as the Feast of the Ascension. According to the Episcopal On-Line Dictionary of the Church it is:
“The occasion on which the risen Christ is taken into heaven after appearing to his followers for forty days (Acts 1:1-11, Mk 16:19). The Ascension marks the conclusion of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. It is the final elevation of his human nature to divine glory and the near presence of God. The Ascension is affirmed by the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. The Ascension is celebrated on Ascension Day, the Thursday that is the fortieth day of the Easter season. It is a principal feast of the church year in the Episcopal Church.”
The story is told in Luke, Mark and Acts. Below is the account from the Gospel of Luke.
Luke 24:44-53 (NRSV)
Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
You must be logged in to post a comment.